“If at age 20 you’re not a socialist, you have no heart. However, if at age 30 you’re not a capitalist, then you have no brain.” This quote has been attributed to at least two of the usual suspects of dead white men who get credit for any vaguely philosophically interesting utterance, in this case Winston Churchill and George Bernard Shaw. The other two suspects in this quartet of prolific quote machines are Albert Einstein and Mark Twain.
I have absolutely no doubt that 50 years from now, the famous words “It is an ideal which I hope to live for. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die” will have been popularly attributed to Einstein.
But back to the socialists and capitalists. I’m not particularly interested in the veracity of the observation itself. While socialism has lost its assertive moral high ground since the fall of a wall in Berlin some 30-odd years ago, capitalism hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory in the last three decades either. But I’m far more interested in the principle that humans change their beliefs with age. That generally rings true. For instance, when I was eight years old I actually believed that society rewards honest, hard-working and kind human beings. Fast-forward 45 years and it has become apparent that more often than not, arseholes get ahead in this world much faster and rise much higher in the pyramid of life.
I’m now at that age where I am not so invested in my being right about everything. I’m open the idea that I am unleashing on the world children who are a few dozen beatdowns short of being upstanding citizens
What I have observed is that while we all have dynamic beliefs that evolve over time, there are certain aspects of our respective outlooks that we all seem to hold onto tenaciously. Not so much because we believe in them so passionately, but because we have just decided that this is what we believe and that’s our final answer. By the time most of us reach our forties, we have discarded any curiosity and interest in interrogating our principles.
Let’s start with how I decided to raise my children. I believe that I was extremely fortunate to have parents who spared the rod. But I have a vivid recollection of the warmth of my grade 1 teacher Ma’am Ndlovu’s thunder thighs around my ears as she bent me over and went medieval on my five-year-old buttocks with a bamboo cane. I have a distinct recollection of deciding there and then that I would not hit any of my children.
Over the years I come to realise that in this country I am in the minority on this point. If we had a referendum about it, the yeas would have it by a landslide and assert grownups’ right to moer not only their children but any other child who offends their sensibilities. And I’m now at that age where I am not so invested in my being right about everything. I’m open the idea that I am unleashing on the world children who are a few dozen beatdowns short of being upstanding citizens.
I am also quite comfortable with the contradiction that while I am an agnostic, I have eagerly participated in and supported the missus’s insistence that we raise them in both of our families' church, the Catholics. And it’s as simple as the fact we weren’t willing to raise them in some secular fashion whose efficacy we have never experienced. It’s really a form of hedging one’s bets in case this agnostic discovers that there really is a heaven and hell complete with a Santa Claus lookalike called St Peter standing at the pearly gates with a clipboard and Bic pen, crossing names off the list. I’m hoping that I can sneak in via the back door for having at least taken my children to church.
There are plenty of other beliefs I harbour that I’m extremely comfortable with, right or wrong. Even if we elected the first woman president and Auntie Helen drove the country’s economy into the ground in ways that make Ramanomics seem like a tea party, invaded Zimbabwe for no reason and built a wall between the Western and Eastern Capes to keep out the “economic immigrants”, my fervent belief that women’s struggles are human struggles that we should all get behind, would remain unshakeable.
I suspect that I’m not the only one who harbours such immovable beliefs and is more than willing to say, “to hell if I’m wrong”.
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